Our series of NASCAR driver interviews continues this week with NASCAR Hall of Famer Rusty Wallace, who currently works as an analyst for ESPN. Sunday's race at Indianapolis marks the kickoff of ESPN's Sprint Cup Series coverage for 2014, its final season broadcasting NASCAR races.

Q: When you were on a long green-flag run and not racing around anyone, what did you think about?

A: First of all, I don't think I ever in my life had the car where it was perfect, where I'm thinking, "I can't improve the car any more." So when you get spaced out like that and you're just logging laps, you're thinking, "Would I be better off raising the track bar and taking wedge out, or would I be better off doing this or this?" I'd spend that lax time thinking about what I wanted to do to make the car better for the next pit stop.

Other times, I might be changing lines – running higher or lower to see if I could get the front wheels to hook up a little better.

If the car was really bad and I knew there was no hope, I'll tell you there were many times I was cruising along going, "OK, what's the best way to get out of the racetrack?" (Laughs)

Q: Fans often come up to you and want to discuss a moment or race from your career. Which one comes up the most?

A: There's a lot of them who still talk about, "I'll never forget the night (in August 1995) at Bristol when you got out of the car and you were so mad and you threw the water bottle and hit Dale Earnhardt in the head." They say that a lot. I've heard that one a lot.

And lately – I think it's because the Brickyard is coming up – they've been talking about the tire test back in the day (1992). "What was it like to be on the track with the stock cars at Indy?" I've heard that a little bit.

Q: I've been asking everybody a question based off something you've already done -- if you were asked to design a new racetrack, what kind of track would you build? You've already been in that situation and designed Iowa Speedway. So would you build the same kind of track again?

A: I would definitely build a smaller track. I really do like the smaller shape. And I'm not saying this because I designed Iowa, but Iowa is a track I really love – the shape of it, the size of it. It's not too big and it's not too small. It's big enough you can put things inside of it and people have a little bit of elbow room, but small enough where they still feel like they're in a more exciting atmosphere.

But there are definitely things I've learned from Iowa that I would change, you know? The way I did the exit of Turn 2, I would alter it a little more. I feel like maybe I carried the banking too far off Turn 2; I should have let it fall off a little sooner. I was so tired of racetracks flattening out real fast – they go from a lot of banking to a flat surface and a lot of them messed up doing that – and I said I was never going to let that happen again. So then I carried the banking too far. I'd back it off a little bit.

As far as the shape and the size, though, I really do love Iowa. You go to any competitor out there and say, "Hey, how'd you like to go to Iowa for a Cup race?" I'd have a hard time believing they'd say, "No, I don't want to go." I think they'd all say they want to go.

How rewarding is it to hear Iowa mentioned so often in the conversation for where the Sprint Cup Series should go next? I assume it feels like your baby.

Thanks for saying that, because it does feel cool. Where I got lucky is I found owners who said, "Let's build it." I had an owner who put $75 million in cash out to build it and he paid for everything. A lot of the other tracks that have been talked about have been good plans and good thoughts, but the money never comes through. Jeff (Gordon's) track (in Canada) has been stuck mothballed forever – I think it's getting some legs now to get going – but I got lucky when I found the Manatt family. They're the biggest pavers in the state of Iowa – they paved Interstate 80 and all that – and they said, "Let's go."

But you know, you build a house and you say, "Oh man, I shoulda changed this." Well, now I built the racetrack and I say, "I shoulda changed that." Now that you built one, you know how to make the second one better. I'm looking forward to the next opportunity to come along where someone says, "Let's do another one of these and make it a little better yet."

Q: If you had a day off to do anything in the world you wanted — but you were not allowed to race — what would you do?

A: Definitely going motorcycle riding. I just love my Harley. I love it. I love going to Sturgis (Motorcycle Rally in Sturgis, S.D.), but I can't go this year because I'm being inducted into the (Motorsports) Hall of Fame (of America, located in Detroit). It's the same exact day as Sturgis. But I really love going out there and cruising the open road with a group of friends, just kicked back and riding. I love customizing a bike and making it really badass.

And I'm a big golfer. I love golf. Love going to the North Carolina mountains, man. Right now it's 72 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, no humidity. It's great.

Q: You got to have a lot of cool experiences away from racing through your job as a NASCAR driver. What's one that sticks out?

A: The coolest thing I've probably done is when I personally flew the F-18s. I'm a jet pilot – I've got about 11,500 hours total time right now. I fly a Lear 31A right now. But back in the day, 1990 actually, they took me down to the VF-135 squadron in Jacksonville, Fla. I'll never forget it.

I was there for four days. I had to swim a triangle and prove if I knew how to swim if I had to eject. They shot me out of a parachute to simulate if I went into the water, how I could get the parachute off me. I shot out of an ejection seat to learn how to operate that. I really went through the full-blown deal.

And then they put one of the chief pilots in the F-18 and we took off, and we had a lot of fuel on board. We did all these missions, like where we were going right at another F-18 and I saw him coming on the radar. We were so close that the plane would shudder when it went by.

Then he said, "OK, the plane is yours. Do whatever you want to do." I went to full afterburners and went right down to the deck. We had a cloud deck that day over the ocean right about 5,000 feet, and I took it down there and nipped the top of the clouds. I was just zipping through on top of the clouds at full afterburner.

He said, "OK, pull it back, pull it back. Let's stand it on its ass." I jerked that thing back and it went straight up. I'll never forget the g-suit was squeezing my legs so damn tight (to prevent him from passing out), I thought it was stuck. I thought it was going to break my legs off. It kept squeezing and squeezing, and I was like, "Oh damn, oh damn!" The only way I could make the pressure stop was to take the nose and roll it over, because the more I kept pulling back, the more it kept telling me I was going to black out.

But that was one of the most radical things I've ever had happen in my life. It was so cool.

Q: When you went home after a bad day at the track, did you vent to someone about it or just keep it to yourself?

A: Every single time I had a bad day at the track and I went home and went to bed and woke up the next day, it was 50% less a problem. Everything was always better the next day.

I would scream and be angry and roll my eyes and say, "How could this have happened?" or "How could they have given me a bad pit stop?" or "How could you have been so stupid and tried to run too high?" or "How did everything go to hell?" I'd throw temper tantrums and all that stuff and I'd go to bed, get eight hours of sleep, wake up the next day and think of it in a much calmer way.

And I do that with everything in life. It seems like it always gets better the next day.

Q: If you could point to another driver in the garage as a good example for your kids, who would it be?

A: I always liked the way Mark Martin raced and how he conducted himself. But I guess right now, I would say Jimmie Johnson has got a good mixture of how to treat people and be nice to people and has an understanding of the other issues. He's able to figure out people's personalities and is able to adjust to them.

I'll never forget last year one of my embarrassing moments. I was up in our ESPN production meetings and said, "OK, I'm going to go walk the garages and see what's going on." So I come through the tunnel (at Michigan) on my golf cart and I look up at the board and Jimmie Johnson is P1. I walk in there and his car is parked in the garage, and I see everybody scrambling, going crazy.

Jimmie comes by and I tell him, "Hey man – congratulations! Good run!" Well, I didn't know he had just wiped his car out in practice and that was the backup car sitting there.

Then they told me what happened, but Jimmie knew what I was looking at. He knew I knew (he) was fast, but knew I didn't know he had just wrecked. But he adjusted that personality and could think ahead and say, "I know what he means."

I try to do that with people, too. They might ask a stupid question – and there are no stupid questions – and you go, "I know why he's asking that. It might come off wrong, but I get it." Jimmie is just really good at reading personalities and being kind to people.

Mark was always good at racing people the right way. He'd run like hell and get to your bumper, and then he'd want some respect. If you got to him, he'd pull right over – boom – and tuck right in behind you. He wouldn't screw with you or lay his door against you or do all this crazy (stuff).

Another guy I like watching – not for the respect on the track or being nice to people – is Tony Stewart for his overall versatility. Tony was so good in an Indy car, is so good in a sprint car, is so good in a stock car. He can have a conversation with the open wheel guys and blend all of it together and still be as close as you can to the manly man stock car driver. He's kind of like the manly man – a little rough, but has been there, done that. Is he the greatest personality you want to be a role model? Probably not, you know?

Q: When you stand around with other drivers and tell old racing stories, what's one of your favorites to tell either about something that happened to yourself or someone else?

A: I was just telling one the other day about Michigan (in 1994). Someone said, "Man, you remember when (team owner and then-track owner Roger) Penske paved that racetrack and it all came up in (Turns) 3 and 4 real bad?" I said, "Hell yeah. I won that race."

With 20 laps to go, I started running out of fuel. I hit pit road at the same time a caution flag flew for something. So I ripped down pit road wide-open, they jump over the wall with a can of ether and start squirting it in the carburetor. The motor is spinning, the motor is spinning, and (crew chief) Buddy Parrott is trying to get it lit. Well when that thing gets lit, it takes his belt and it gets hung on the hood hinge. It jerks him down pit road and he's tumbling down pit road and it broke his glasses, shattered them all up.

So they go back green and (Dale) Earnhardt is leading the race. Racetrack is tore all to hell in Turns 3 and 4, all rutted up. I passed a car a lap. (With four laps to go) I'm coming down the back straightaway and I pull up to Earnhardt's rear bumper. I went in there to Turn 3, and he went to the top to go around the ruts. Well, I went right through the rut and the racetrack was completely tore up. I put the rut right at my hood hinge and I had to hold a perfect line – I put all the tore up track right between my tires. I went right through there and came off Turn 4 and cleared him and won the race.

The thing I'll never forget is standing with Parrott in victory lane, and his hat is on sideways and his glasses are all crooked and busted in a million pieces. We dominated all day long and just about threw it away because we miscalculated our fuel.

So you knew if you went through the ruts, you would have gotten a flat tire?

I would have lost the whole car. We were actually driving through gravel, it was so bad. If I would have gotten my right rear tire in there, I'd be done. My only chance was to go for it. I went in there at about 180 mph, put my right side tires right at the edge and said, "Do not slip, do not slip." (Mimics holding the wheel and makes engine sound). And off I went.

The other story was when we raced at Bristol (in August 1987). Me and Earnhardt raced our (butts) off at Bristol, and it was so hot. I dogged the crap out of him, but I finished second and he won. I was so hot, I got out of the car and I just slid down the car and I could hardly stand up. He pulled up in victory lane and he's sitting there, and his hands were so limp, he couldn't even turn the car off. He was so weak, he couldn't get his hands to the switches and his pit crew had to turn the car off for him.

We killed each other, and it (freaking) melted us right to the ground. That was 150,000 people going ape. The place was a rock concert. And we drove and drove and drove, and I've never seen a race at Bristol that physical. We just drove each other until we dripped out of the car. That's the truth, too. That's the way it was.

Q: What's a TV show you're really into right now?

A: I got to be quite honest – every single night when I go home, the first thing I turn on is a car show. I turn on the Velocity channel and watch the car stuff. I look at CNN to get my news, then I go to ESPN to see what's going on, and then I go to the Velocity channel and watch my car shows. I was really big into watching (former NASCAR crew chief and former ESPN analyst) Ray Evernham's show (Americarna) and I think most people know I'm a big Barrett-Jackson fan. I go out there every year.

Q: What's the last movie you saw – either at home or in the theater -- and was it any good?

A: One I thought was really cool that I watched was (The)Monuments Men. It's the one where they saved all the art.

Q: If you could give a piece of advice to your younger self — something you know now that you didn't know then — what would it be?

A: Oh gosh. There are so many things. I wish I would always have listened more. ESPN got on me when I first started working with them because whoever I was working with on the set would be talking about something, and if it didn't interest me, my mind was already loading for what I was about to say. There were many times they'd get done talking, and if it was my turn to add, sometimes I screwed up and it wasn't even anything they were talking about – I'd just completely go into a different subject. I'd go back and watch myself on tape and go, "Oh (shoot), yeah."

I wish in everything in life, I'd have done a better job in listening. My dad told me, "You can't listen and learn with your mouth open." So I'd like to have listened more, and listened and learned. I'm well aware of it right now.

Q: I've been asking each person to give me a question for the next interview. Do you have a question I could ask the next person?

A: What are you going to do to help grow the sport? You're making a lot of money. You've got a Cup ride. We don't need you at all. So what are you going to do to help grow the sport?